At times when I power on the computer it takes a lot of time to go past the Windows startup logo screen (without the logo - would just say starting windows) and the HDD activity light keeps blinking for a long time. It takes about a minute for the windows logo to show up and then the system boots normally. I've also observed this activity light turned off totally during the Windows boot and the PC stays at a blank screen or the Starting Windows screen. About 2-3 times upon a manual restart it comes up with a message "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key"

Is the MBR somehow corrupted? It's not unheard of and can sometimes cause the "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key" message.
Are you sure your boot drive isn't read to crap out on you? Have you run chkdsk on it?

I'm not sure what the exact problem is just throwing out ideas for you to look into.

Have swapped cables. CHKDSK did not come up with any problems. The SSD is new and Sata 3 capable. The motherboard is an ASUS M5A97 R2.0 which is Sata 3 capable too. I am using a Sata 3 cable. Checked Event Viewer, found this:

Event 41, Kernel Power
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

I will have to check my memory, but if I'm not mistaken, connecting a sata 2 device to the sata 3 controller, will cause the other devices to default to sata 2. This would explain the slow cold boot. I had to eliminate a drive to stop this. Try disconnecting the optical drive from the sata 3 controller and run a few cold boots and see what happens.

I will have to check my memory, but if I'm not mistaken, connecting a sata 2 device to the sata 3 controller, will cause the other devices to default to sata 2. This would explain the slow cold boot. I had to eliminate a drive to stop this. Try disconnecting the optical drive from the sata 3 controller and run a few cold boots and see what happens.

Your mistaken.
You can have a sata 3 device and a sata device on same system, and they will both run at the rated speed.

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OP, you won't have IRST, as you have an AMD board. But;
Look at the 1st paragraph of page 2-9 of your motherboard manual.
Your DVD drive has to be connected to port SATA3G_5 or SATA3G_6; and the SATA mode of the port it is connected to has to be IDE mode.
After you change the SATA mode change the Type to "CDROM" (page 2-7).

I would also get crystaldiskinfo (free) and post a pic of the SSD's stats.

Here's the report:

Quote:

Originally Posted by james7679

OP, you won't have IRST, as you have an AMD board. But;
Look at the 1st paragraph of page 2-9 of your motherboard manual.
Your DVD drive has to be connected to port SATA3G_5 or SATA3G_6; and the SATA mode of the port it is connected to has to be IDE mode.
After you change the SATA mode change the Type to "CDROM" (page 2-7).

Which drive has the caution attribute (drive F from that screenshot)? That isn't good, and that drive might just die at any time...

Thanks. Here's another drive specific screen shot:

What is "Current Pending Sector Count" supposed to mean? Anything that can be done to resolve it? Or you guys suggest an RMA?

Btw, today morning I powered on the computer and it took about 1 minute for the PC to boot up. It stayed at the 'Starting Windows' screen with the HDD activity light blinking continuously for about a minute after which the windows logo came up and then it booted to the login screen.

What is "Current Pending Sector Count" supposed to mean? Anything that can be done to resolve it? Or you guys suggest an RMA?

Btw, today morning I powered on the computer and it took about 1 minute for the PC to boot up. It stayed at the 'Starting Windows' screen with the HDD activity light blinking continuously for about a minute after which the windows logo came up and then it booted to the login screen.

Yeah, RMA if you can.

That error means

Quote:

Current count of unstable sectors (waiting for remapping). The raw value of this attribute indicates the total number of sectors waiting for remapping. Later, when some of these sectors are read successfully, the value is decreased. If errors still occur when reading some sector, the hard drive will try to restore the data, transfer it to the reserved disk area (spare area) and mark this sector as remapped. If this attribute value remains at zero, it indicates that the quality of the corresponding surface area is low

__________________
The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Every time I come across the above mentioned error message, the SSD does not show up in BIOS until I shut down completely, drain flea power and power it back on after some time. I suspect it is the SSD.